Thursday, July 1st, 2010

On Tuesday I came back to the capital from having observed the elections in Gitega, the second biggest city in the center of the country. We're busy writing up a report on our observations, which I will share later, so for the moment I will withhold comments about whether irregularities were observed, but I have [...]

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

So a lot of news here lately, starting over the weekend with 11 grenade attacks centered around various parts of the capital, and a few more in the past few days. In general, these had no single clearly discernible political or ethnic target, and for example, two recent attacks in Gihosha were committed in one [...]

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

Since my last post, there's been a fair amount of news surrounding the communal elections. When the preliminary results were announced, a group of eight, and then 13 opposition political parties dismissed the election as a fraud, called for new elections, and for a new independent electoral commission. The basis of their complaint was a [...]

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

I arrived in Burundi six days ago, just in time to be around for the communal or “district” elections which took place yesterday, the first in a series that will take place over the summer and into September. They were originally scheduled three days earlier, but delays in distributing the elector cards and problems [...]